Group has sights on discovery museum for children

SANTA CRUZ -- There are more than 340 discovery museums designed to engage children around the world, including one in Monterey and several in the San Francisco Bay Area. But there is not one in Santa Cruz, a fact that a group of volunteers is determined to change.

After six months of planning, the group is preparing to launch a fundraising drive and hopes to open an interactive museum for youngsters a year from now.

While still looking for a site, planning exhibits, recruiting supporters and planning fundraising activities, the group has a very clear idea of the goals it hopes to achieve.

"A fun, hands-on, engaging environment where children and their parents experience new things, learn, play (and) connect," wrote Bonnie and Patrice Keet in an email to the Sentinel.

The concept is to create a place that incorporates the wonders of the natural, cultural and scientific worlds where kids can be exposed to a variety of activities and interact with the exhibits and learn while they play.

Co-founders of the Santa Cruz Children's Museum of Discovery (sccmod) campaign, the two began their quest for an interactive museum that would intrigue and engage children back in July, shortly after Patrice Keet took her two young grandchildren to a discovery museum for kids in the Bay Area. Patrice Keet began talking about the experience at a family gathering. Every one who joined the conversation liked the idea, and had just one question: why isn't there such a museum in Santa Cruz? That was quickly followed by a second question: What can we do to fill that void?

"It took off from there," said Bonnie Keet, who is married to Patrice's nephew. "The got rolling and started gathering momentum."

The first step was to recruit supporters and form a board of directors to help turn the dream into a reality. Since then, several hundred local residents, educators, business leaders and representatives from city government and area nonprofits have signed on to support the program. Various committees have been established to raise money, work with exhibit designers, find a suitable building and get the project off the ground. Enthusiasm for the project has been strong.

"When Patrice told me about it I was very excited and jumped on it," said Quinn Cormier, who is on the facility search committee and is the mother of two young children.

The group is looking for an existing building within the county to house a 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot museum. Ideally, they hope to find an affordable site in an area that has a lot of foot traffic. Depending upon the site, how much work it will take to turn it into a museum, and what exhibits are developed, the group anticipates it will need to raise from $750,000 to 1.5 million.

Interactive discovery museums for children is not a new concept. The world's first such facility opened in Brooklyn New York in 1899, with California's first such museum opening in Palo Alto in 1937. The idea has soared in popularity in recent years. Opening children's discovery museums has become a trend around the U.S., said Danielle Dorrian, who chairs the exhibit committee. Patrice Keet noted that there are a number of emerging children's museums in the pipeline now.